A commercial transaction using an electronic money system has come to be widely performed with rapid progress of ID technology in recent years.
The commercial transaction using the electronic money system is performed by operating electronic information called “value” having an exchange value equivalent to money to transfer value.
Generally, the value is written in an IC chip (hereinafter, referred to as electronic money chip) incorporated in a mobile phone or an IC card owned by the user, and an amount that this value represents can be rewritten by inputting amount changing information via a unit called a reader/writer.
Purchase of articles/service by rewriting the value as described above can be performed at an affiliated shop managed by a business enterprise (affiliated store) that has made a contract of performing the commercial transaction in values.
The affiliated store is provided with an affiliated store terminal equipped with the reader/writer at a shop counter of the affiliated shop, and settlement is made by subtracting the value stored in a user's electronic money chip by a payment.
Meanwhile, the user can also pay money to the affiliated store to have the value equivalent to the amount written in the electronic money chip by the reader/writer. Processing of writing the value in the electronic money chip is called “charge”.
Other than this, the charge can be performed by putting cash into a cash receiving machine, or alternatively, it can also be performed from a server device installed on the network, using withdrawal from a bank account or settlement by a credit card.
An electronic money card in which an electronic money chip is incorporated in a plastic card has conventionally been common, but with the rapid spread of the mobile phone in recent years, a system which incorporates the electronic money chip in the mobile phone and utilizes a synergetic effect with a communication function of the mobile phone has come to be widely used.
A technology of treating electronic money by the mobile phone in such a way includes an electronic money settlement system using the mobile phone disclosed in the following document.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2002-352173
This technology intends to perform settlement in values stored in the mobile phone using the communication function that the mobile phone has.